Benson, C. David.
Piero Boitani, ed. The European Tragedy of Troilus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 153-70.
After Chaucer's TC, minor writers of the fifteenth, sixteenth,and early seventeenth centuries generally ignore "both the high passion and the tragedy of the lovers." The two type characters appear chiefly in brief allusions, "with none of Chaucer's…
Benson, C. David.
Christianity & Literature 37 (1988): 7-22.
Benson urges that Chaucer be returned from merely professional scholarship to the mainstream of English literature and finds that structuralist, poststructuralist, Marxist, and feminist theories give new perspectives on Chaucer's work. Equally,…
Benson, C. David.
John V. Fleming and Thomas J. Heffernan, eds. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 2, 1986. (Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1987): pp. 159-67.
Chaucer experiments with "different aesthetic and doctrinal possibilities" in his religious tales, which, "far from being dull and dutiful," demonstrate his literary virtuosity. Though MLT and ClT tell similar stories, MLT is a religious romance…
Benson, C. David.
Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 93-108.
The characters in CT are neither fully developed nor consistent; tellers and their tales are loosely connected. Thus, Kittredge's "dramatic theory" is limited: it leads readers to focus on personalities of the pilgrims rather than on Chaucer's…
Benson, C. David.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.
Despite the tenets of "dramatic theory" from Kittredge to modern times, the links between the pilgrims and their tales are not reliable bases on which to build valid literary criticism. Not the psyches of the pilgrims but the different styles of the…
Benson, C. David.
Chaucer Review 19 (1985): 100-09.
Chaucer's Man of Law attacks Gower for stories of Canacee and Apollonius, while defending Chaucer for omission of "swich unkynde abhomynacions" (MLP 77-89). Gower sympathizes with but condemns the characters. In Chaucer we have "a less rigidly…
Benson, C. David.
American Notes and Queries 22 (1984): 62-66.
The Physician's being "grounded in astronomye," i.e., astrology, is not a slighting gibe at his abilities. The publication of Nicholas of Lynn's "Kalendarium" (ed. Sigmund Eisner, Chaucer Library) offers "convincing evidence that Chaucer intended no…
Benson, C. David.
Chaucer Review 13 (1979): 308-15.
Guido's "Historia Destructionis Troiae" uses an objective historical tone, mixed with outbursts of personal lamentation. From this Chaucer developed his narrator, a philosophical historian who is affected as a man by his own story, to accent in TC…
Benson, C. David.
Wendy Harding, ed. Drama, Narrative and Poetry in The Canterbury Tales (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2003), pp. 22-33.
Benson argues against interpreting CT in terms of dramatic theory: the pilgrims are not fully developed human characters, nor are their tales expressions of their individual psychologies. The most developed pilgrims-the Pardoner and the Wife of…
Benson, C. David.
Mediaevalia 8 (1985 for 1982): 337-49
The Pardoner should be read not as a real person but as an allegorical figure. Modern discussions overemphasize the Pardoner's sexuality and distort the fact that hints about his sexuality prepare for the more important concern with his…
Benson, C. David.
Ardis Butterfield, ed. Chaucer and the City (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006), pp. 129-44.
Significantly, the setting of GP is located outside the limits of London proper, and most of the pilgrims are not Londoners. CkT offers a clear vision of fourteenth-century London and reflects what is both good and appalling about the city.
Benson, C. David.
Essays in Medieval Studies 24 (2007): 1-20.
Benson describes the very different views of London produced by Chaucer, Gower, Hoccleve, and Lydgate, as well as the depictions in William FitzStephen's "Description of London" (1174) and "London Lickpenny" (fifteenth-century). These representations…
Benson, C. David.
Stephen J. Harris and Bryon L. Grigsby, eds. Misconceptions About the Middle Ages. Routledge Studies in Medieval Religion and Culture, no. 7 (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 240-53.
Benson advocates teaching Chaucer in Middle English, because the liveliness and vitality of Chaucer's language are lost in translation.
Benson, C. David.
American Benedictine Review 24 (1973): 299-312.
Demonstrates that John Lydgate's modifications of his sources in his "Troy Book" result in a "convincing picture of the ancient world," although Lydgate did not achieve the superior historical texture that Chaucer produced in KnT.
Benson, C. David.
Chaucer Review 3.2 (1968): 107-23.
Describes the "basic historical method" of KnT as consistent with the "contemporary aristocratic chronicle," showing how Chaucer uses Statius's "Thebaid" to archaize the plot drawn from Boccaccio's "Teseida" and create a world "believable" for his…
Benson, C. David.
Jenny Adams and Nancy Mason Bradbury, eds. Medieval Women and Their Objects (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017), pp. 267-87.
Discusses SNT as Chaucer's only hagiographical work to evaluate the medieval perception of art. Contrasts the medieval devotion to earthly relics in relation to St. Cecilia's desire to shed the physical and enter the spiritual, while paralleling her…
Benson, C. David.
University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019.
Studies "ancient Rome as a major theme in the works of late medieval English poets": Chaucer, Gower, Langland, Lydgate, and the anonymous authors of "Stacions of Rome" and the interpolated "Metrical Mirabilia." Chapter 3, "Heroic (Women) in Chaucer's…
Benson, Donald R.
Chaucer Review 14 (1979): 48-60.
Rhetorically nearer to exhortation than to encomium, the didactic structure of this passage (4.1267-1392) rises in a series of contradictions that confuse doctrines and undercut ironic perceptions. None of the proposed assignments of the passage…
Benson, L[arry] D.
Derek Brewer, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer. Writers and their Background (London: G. Bell, 1974), pp. 321-51.
Descriptive survey of major developments in Chaucer criticism and scholarship, treated historically and sub-divided into eight categories: 1) canon, 2) texts, 3) language and versification, 4) biography, 5) learning, 6) sources, 7)…
Benson, L[arry] D.
Derek Brewer, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer. Writers and their Background (London: G. Bell, 1974), pp. 352-72.
Accompanies Benson's discursive "Reader's Guide to Chaucer," included in the same volume (pp. 321-51). Lists selected "critical and scholarly works" (some lightly annotated), and indicates with an asterisk works that are "especially suitable for…
